Hiding The Patients

A team of world Health Organization (WHO) officials who visited Beijing's China-Japan Friendship Hospital last week to investigate the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) raging in the country were taken for a ride. So, it turns out, were the patients. Sources tell TIME that before the WHO team arrived at the hospital, 31 coughing, shivering staff members who had caught SARS from patients were hastily loaded into ambulances and driven around until the investigators left.

China claims the virus that causes SARS has infected 1,530 of its citizens and killed 67, but WHO officials suspect the numbers are higher. "We have...